From Foresight, Vol. 10, No. 2
published 2003
Economy of scale has not proven its worth in America’s schools, Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa report in Hoover Digest. In the 1950s America’s renewed interest in the quality of education generated many new ideas for educational improvement, including a more "scientific" approach to education. Education "experts" then believed that consolidation would mean economies of scale: greater efficiency and effectiveness. Franklin Keller’s 1955 book, The Comprehensive High School, recommended consolidation as did James Conant’s 1959 book, The American High School, which asserted that the small high school was the leading problem in education and its elimination should be a top priority. Entitlement programs and desegregation compliance in the 1960s further contributed to the consolidation movement.
Research today, however, contradicts the education experts of decades earlier who presumed that, among other things, large schools––high schools in particular––would offer a more diverse curriculum and more opportunities at a lower cost. Mounting evidence suggests that neither of these assertions has proven to be true. In fact, comprehensive research shows that small schools are superior to large schools on most measures and equal to them on the rest. A meta-analysis of 103 studies revealed that the academic achievement of students in small schools is at least equal to, and often superior to, that of large schools. A recent study documenting Chicago’s small-school reform implementation, which included approximately 150 schools, showed improved standardized test scores or average test scores holding steady despite more students taking the test. Indeed, no available research suggests that large schools are superior to small schools in their achievement effects.
Also evident is marked improvement in achievement among ethnic minority students and students of low socioeconomic status. A July 1997 study reported that "disadvantaged students in small schools significantly outperformed those in large ones on standardized basic skills tests." A further study found that, "for both reading and math, small schools produce greater achievement gains than larger schools holding demographic and teacher characteristics constant."
Here, smaller, community-based schools continue to be shuttered in favor of consolidation. However, the widespread alienation we found in large Kentucky high schools suggests that more, much more needs to be learned about the environments in which students perform best. Many school districts are routinely creating smaller learning environments for students who cannot adapt to these settings, addressing their unique needs outside of the mainstream of the larger school. At the polar opposite, so-called magnet schools offer small-school environments to those who excel. And private schools continue to offer high-quality education in a small-school setting to those whose parents can afford to pay for the privilege.
Ultimately, we may learn that the sterility of the institutions we have created to shepherd children into adulthood is at the root of the alienation that appears so widespread among adolescents. Young people consistently told our case study researchers for Listening to Kentucky High Schools that the quality they most appreciate in teachers is "caring," which is difficult to achieve in the large, impersonal, institutional environments typical of high schools. Indeed, only in the oases within these larger schools, special programs and the spheres of special teachers, did we see students flourishing. For school reform to advance and enable broad-based excellence and rising achievement, it is incumbent upon education leaders to learn more about this issue. If small schools indeed offer the optimum learning environment, as these data suggest, we must discover ways of replicating them within the infrastructure we have built.